manna

A viral branding campaign that actually went
viral

Meet Manna

Manna is a fast moving, family-owned business that has been
producing divine pasta sauces and condiments since 1935. The brand
focuses on great taste, quality of the ingredients and convenience
with families being their main target audience.

The Brief

With the vast amount of pasta sauces and condiments out there, it
can be difficult for brands to really stand out. Manna was looking
for a unique, innovative way to increase brand awareness and
likability by establishing more of an online presence via social
media.

The Budget

€ 100.000 (donation Cliniclowns not included)

What was our strategy?

What was our strategy?
The idea was simple: Launch a branding campaign on social media
without showing the actual brand. Exactly.

We contacted Piet Huysentruyt, a popular Michelin-star TV chef.
Together we created a series of 5 funny, promotional cooking videos
that were essentially mocking the well-known chef. The videos were
shared on Facebook and YouTube pages called Flop
Chef.

But, just to stir things up a bit (yes, we just said that), the
viewers had no idea Piet was in on the joke. When we uploaded the first video,
the response was undeniably bloody brilliant.

In the third
video, we revealed the real purpose and message behind them,
using the phrase “Maakt het niet moeilijk. Maakt het gewoon lékker”
(“Don’t make it difficult. Make it tasty”) at the end followed by
the Manna logo and tagline ‘divine sauces’. It basically comes down
to this: no matter how badly your meal turns out, there’s always
Manna.

In the fourth
video, Piet Huysentruyt explained he had been involved the
entire time and revealed that, by liking and sharing the video,
viewers were actually helping to raise money for charity. We also
created an after campaign allowing people to see how much money had
been raised and donated by Manna and Piet Huysentruyt.

Why are we proud of this project?

The aim of the series was really to create a positive image of Manna
that reflected on the qualities of their brand and increased
awareness through social media. What it actually did, was achieve a
much greater goal for both Manna and Piet Huysentruyt.

The first video generated over 1.5 thousand likes and 200,000 views
on Facebook and was even picked up by national newspapers and
channels. After two weeks, a Facebook page, containing nothing but 2
videos, had almost 4,000 followers. The campaign went viral and
became a huge success allowing Manna and Piet to raise € 20.000 for
charity.